“They might come back any second,” Nev Reoh said, edging up to them. Bobbie Ray noticed he stayed well out of arm’s reach.

“No, they won’t,” both Bobbie Ray and Starsa said at the same time. She grinned, and he finally felt his whiskers move in response, lying smoothly against his face as his teeth showed in a smile.

They didn’t even make it back to the seep to rejoin Ijen, Puller, and Reeves before the cadet ship signaled them to await transport. As the stark landscape faded from view, Bobbie Ray knew it would be forever burned into his memory, along with the victory he’d had facing down the Rex.

“There were no fatalities among the cadets,” the survival instructor informed them on reaching the ship. “Everyone has automatically passed their survival test, whether they regrouped or not.”

Bobbie Ray had completely forgotten about the Academy, and it seemed very far away with the battlelust still thrumming through his blood.

“When we realized it was a ruse,” the instructor added, “we fought our way back though the Rex shuttles that were holding us off. We believe they were drawn here because of yourlifesigns, Cadet Jefferson. We could tell there was a confrontation going on down there. What happened?”

Bobbie Ray shrugged one shoulder. “It was some sort of mock battle. As soon as I engaged them, they withdrew.”

He knew that didn’t explain everything, but he also knew there was no way to talk about what had happened. It was more subtle and more powerful than anything he had ever felt before. He was used to always being the strongest, the fastest, the most agile, but when his own kind had challenged him, he felt as bumbling and awkward as Nev Reoh. He had gone into security because it came naturally and was easy for him, but after seeing the Rex laughingat him while he was stuck in that hole, he realized how much he had let his natural abilities slide.

Now he couldn’t wait to get back to the Academy and try some of those intimidation techniques used by the Rex. Just wait until his instructors saw what he could do!

Chapter Five

MOLL ENOR WAS RETURNING from the back of the science pod, balso tonic in hand, when she overheard Cadet Campbell saying to Cadet Wu, “I do not know the cadet well enough to say.”

“Yeah, that’s my point,” Wu agreed with a wry grin. “You’d think after a month of living on the science station together–”

He broke off abruptly as Moll Enor appeared around the central power assembly. Cadet Wu was leaning forward curiously, intent on gossiping with the taciturn Campbell. Cadet Campbell was concentrating on his console, frowning slightly, but even he started in surprise at Moll’s appearance.

That’s when Moll realized they were talking about her. She flushed hotly, avoiding their eyes, thankful that they probably wouldn’t notice the way her spots suddenly stood out. Ever since she had won top honors in her class, all the cadets knew who she was. They constantly watched her and talked about her. She was the freak again, exactly as she had been on the Trill homeworld, where having a photographic memory was extremely rare.

“Excuse me, sir,” Moll said to Cadet Mantegna, the designated commander on this tagging and tracking mission within the ring nebula. “Do you have the latest readings on the levels of interior microwave radiation?”

Mantegna sighed at her interruption, not bothering to look up. “It will have to wait a few minutes, Cadet Enor. I’m in the middle of the infrared sensor sweep right now.” Mantegna flicked Moll a glance as she hesitated. “Is that all?”

“Yes, sir,” Moll said, backing away.

She made it back to her station, where she was running a computer program of the numerous mathematical equations that plotted the movements of the asteroids as they spun and tumbled in the turbulence of the ring nebula, moving in a roughly helixical orbit. There was only a three‑second delay from the sensor pickups to mathematical translation, so she was basically seeing a real‑time flow of data, gathered for an in‑depth analysis by the astrophysics lab. For Moll, the work had been routine the second day, and except when she was in command of their science pod, she had spent the better part of four weeks staring with glazed eyes at the screen, hypnotized by the chaotic pattern that appeared and disappeared within the data.

The Federation astrophysics lab, poised outside the Trifid ring nebula, was considered a prime field assignment. Though it was relatively small, it was close to Sol system, so teams of cadets were rotated in. The cadets used the science pod, the Sagittarius,to do the grunt work of collecting data in the neverending surveys of the debris. Based on the data, some scientists theorized that the protosolar system was destroyed when a subspace compression collided with the Trifid star, causing it to go supernova and eject most of its mass.

Whereas most nebula expand away from their source, diffusing high‑energy particles and cosmic rays, the compression phenomenon caused the Trifid ring nebula to rotate in on itself, forming a churning toroid around a strong gravity well. It was almost as awe‑inspiring as the Bajoran wormhole, which she had gone to see during the summer break while on field assignment on the Oberth‑class science ship, the Copernicus.

Because of her first‑place standing in her class, Moll Enor had also been able to choose to come to the Trifid ring nebula. From the science station, Moll liked to watch the toroid bands of color caused by the centrifugal action of the gases. The bands were separated into turquoise blue darkening to purple in the center, surrounded by a wide band of yellow, and thinner bands of red and green on the outer edge.

The colors were so brilliant that the first time she entered the gas cloud, she expected it to appear opaque inside. Instead, the interior shimmered with luminous discharges arcing between the tumbling asteroids, creating a delicate tracery of fine molecular chains, endlessly twisting and tangling together.

Her station signaled when data was received from Mantegna’s internal synchrotron scan. Electrons moving at nearly the speed of light inevitably leaked into the Sagittariusas they spiraled about the magnetic field of the nebula. The other cadets were getting negligent with the Starfleet protocol of manually confirming the automatic scans, but it was necessary, since synchrotron radiation often distorted scanner readings.

Moll hadn’t told them that Trill who were joined with the vermiform symbiont were particularly sensitive to annular phase transitions. Some joined Trill weren’t able to use the transporter system. She didn’t have that problem, but she didn’t want to find out the hard way that the Enor symbiont was sensistive to higher levels of synchrotron radiation.

Mantegna muttered something as he abruptly began running a systems diagnostic check.

“What’s wrong?” Wu asked.

Mantegna stood up to activate the power boost. “I’m trying to find out. The comm link won’t open.”

“Maybe something’s wrong with the phase buffers on the emitters,” Wukee suggested. “Or the ones on the relay. Remember last week–”

“If you would give me a moment,” Mantegna interrupted, “I’ll tell you where the malfunction is. . . .” Campbell turned along with Moll as Mantegna thoughtfully murmured, “Hmm . . .” over the data.

“Well? Are you going to tell us?” Wukee asked insistently.

Mantegna reseated himself at the navigation console. “The problem is in the communications relay.” He scanned for the nearest relay buoy.

Since Moll received the same telemetry report on the asteroids, she knew the nearest relay was in the tertiary phase layer of the nebula–what appeared to be the thick yellow ring from the exterior. Inside, there was no difference in the twinkling brightness of layers upon layers of discharge filaments that constantly appeared and disappeared between the asteroids. But cadet research teams were only supposed to catalog and tag asteroids in the outer red and green bands, because the turbulence of the magnetic field increased exponentially toward the gravity well.